Please read this entire post before responding as I hope to address everything all at once.
The GoalThe goal of this thread is to be able to provide a place for new players to ask questions without having to start a new thread or be afraid of the responses. As new players ask questions they will start to see that most of the answers can be answered by stickies or information that is on the forums and they will get used to using those resources. One could argue that this will become a crutch and make people not want to use the stickies but I think the opposite effect is more realistic. I see it as a way to point people to the stickies and other resources found on MD in a nice way rather than beating them up the first time they make the mistake of not doing research.
How to use this threadAsk any market related questions for which you were unable to find an answer in the stickies. If you ask a question that can be answered by reading a specific sticky then IGÇÖll simply post a link to the appropriate sticky and I encourage anyone else reading the thread to do the same if they know the location of the specific resource that will answer the question. If you read a question and know the answer, please feel free to answer it in a polite manner. If you donGÇÖt think you are capable or donGÇÖt want to waste your time... then donGÇÖt. ItGÇÖs that simple. This is an attempt to create a central place for new players to ask questions and find quick solutions.
What this thread is notThis is not the thread in which you abuse someone for asking a question or flame an answer. This thread will tend to have a lot of rookie questions of the sort most likely asked by new players. If you have a problem with that then please avoid this thread. You have been warned. If you do not want to participate in the question/answer process then please avoid this thread.
Why make this threadA challenge in any public forum is to maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio. Frequent posts that are quickly addressed with simple answers tend to clutter up the forum.
The biggest complaint IGÇÖve seen is that new players arenGÇÖt reading the stickies and are starting new threads to ask simple questions. After looking around the forums at the information available I came to the conclusion that the problem may not be entirely related to laziness as we previously thought. There is A LOT of information provided in the stickies at the top of this forum and A LOT of information contained in the threads on the first several pages. As a recent college graduate I can say one of the most difficult parts of most of my classes was writing papers over topics that had tons of resources available on them. It was very difficult to sift through all of the information that could easily be a 30+ page paper and try to write a 20 page maximum length paper.
We have to remember that we have been along for the ride and have taken in most of the information as it became available. New players are hit with all of the information at once and are expected to be able to go through it all and make sense of it.
Basic GuidelinesObviously there is no way for folks to enforce any rules for this thread (other than to report the posting), so let's call this section "Guidelines", rather than "Rules":
- Please donGÇÖt flame/troll/break forum rules.
- Please be polite when asking/answering questions.
- Please donGÇÖt post asking for investors in this thread, that type of thing needs its own thread.
- Please avoid introducing large/complex/novel topics here that might justify their own thread where a full discussion can take place. If you want feedback about an idea, do the idea justice by giving it its own thread. Post here to get some quick pointers to where an idea was discussed before, and after you've checked out the past discussions, maybe then it'd make sense to kick off a new discussion if you have something new to bring to the topic.
- Avoid this thread like the plague if you donGÇÖt want to see rookie questions or questions that you think are rookie questions. There should be no question as to the types of things you will see here.
ExamplesExample Question 1: How much should I be charging to do courier contracts?
Example Answer 1: Several factors can go into answering such a question such as how much are others charging? How much is your time worth? How much collateral do you have? You should start by checking the Sell Orders forum to see what others are charging and to see what the requirements/features are of their service. Taking that information into consideration along with the value you put on your time you should be able to come up with a pretty good idea.
Example Question 2: What third-party tools can help me manage my ISK and trading needs?
Example Answer 2: You can find a list of tools in the "
Market Resources" EVElopedia page that is linked from the sticky at the top of this forum.